Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday January 17, 2014 @05:42PM
from the let's-argue-about-killing-people dept.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire appeared to gasp and convulse for roughly 10 minutes before he finally died during his execution by lethal injection using a new combination of drugs. The new drugs were used because European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions — among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital. The state used a combination of the drugs midazolam, a sedative, and the painkiller hydromorphone, the state corrections department told CNN. In an opinion piece written for CNN earlier this week, a law professor noted that McGuire's attorneys argued he would 'suffocate to death in agony and terror.' 'The state disagrees. But the truth is that no one knows exactly how McGuire will die, how long it will take or what he will experience in the process,' wrote Elisabeth A. Semel, clinic professor of law and director of the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. According to a pool report from journalists who witnessed the execution, the whole process took more than 15 minutes, during which McGuire made 'several loud snorting or snoring sounds.' Allen Bohnert, a public defender who lead McGuire's appeal to stop his execution in federal court on the grounds that the drugs would cause undue agony and terror, called the execution process a 'failed experiment' and said his office will look into what happened. 'The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled by what took place here today in their name.'"

That was advice, because what he also said was as you keep on earth so shall he keep in heaven, as well as judge not least you be judged.

Notice a pattern, he is basically saying God is going to hold you to your own standard and very likely treat you accordingly as well. So avoid hypocracy and treat others well and be quick and open to forgive, because that will timately serve you best.

OTOH - Christians don't have to just roll over and accept monstrous actions by others. There are things that most people w

Could restate your opinion in a way that makes some semblance of logical sense? I have no idea what property rights in America you claim "European busybodies" are infringing by refusing to sell to murderers.

The phrasing in the 8th amendment is "cruel and unusual" FYI, and I'm pretty sure a court will find a stay of executions necessary until a new method is devised.

What is considered Cruel and Unusual changes over time.

A firing squad, beheading or hanging were considered just fine for a long time. Same goes for the Electric Chair, it was all the rage for decades. Now we're trying to put people to "sleep" with a comfy pillow and a bedtime story.

I agree, All this injection stuff is to spare OUR feelings, not the prisoner's. If we were so concerned about humane execution we would use the guillotine. But that is messy and prevents us from pretending we aren't killing a person. If the person deserves it, let's at least be grown up enough to be honest about it.

It's been a long while since researching the subject, but it was something along the lines of 30% of people who get killed on death row, get proven innocent some time after. Partly because of aggressive DAs that only care about winning at all costs.

So long as our justice system uses humans, I won't trust it to kill people.

gas chambers of all types are dangerous, if you make it totally painless/sansationless you also make it a hazard for workers if the system malfunctions.

a fixed aim bench rifle of sufficient bore directly to the head would be a 100% effective and 100% painless execution, so long as the muzzle velocity is such that the brain is destroyed faster than a nerve impulse travels (approximately 60 mph iirc) it would be physically impossible to perceive any pain

The person you're responding to is discussing "exit bag" systems, a popular method for self-euthanasia.

Generally speaking someone using an "exit bag" (google for yourself) will leave a polite note on the door in case of leakage, since they probably won't be alive later to turn off the knob on the gas tank, but in any controlled setting, a respirator-type mask would do the trick wonderfully.

A colorant or odorant could be easily added for operant safety, but it's not any more dangerous for the operator than, say, dental gasses.

gas chambers of all types are dangerous, if you make it totally painless/sansationless you also make it a hazard for workers if the system malfunctions.

Except that while hydrogen cyanide execution is lethal because of its presence (making it dangerous for people around if it escapes), suffocation in nitrogen is lethal because of oxygen's absence. You have to try hard to keep the oxygen out. If the 100% nitrogen escapes from the small chamber, all it does is that it mixes with the 80% of nitrogen in the large surrounding volume that is already there!

Nitrogen doesn't need a "gas chamber". Just a mask and reservoir bag (aka non-rebreather mask). Cost: $20 for the disposable mask. A few bucks per cubic metre for high-grade nitrogen. (I'd also add a bubbler to remove any odours, and warm and humidify the gas.)

a fixed aim bench rifle of sufficient bore directly to the head

Judging from bolt-guns at slaughterhouses, there's an error rate. And the result of an error is nasty. (Whereas if the nitrogen doesn't work, it just doesn't work.)

This is the problem with all methods of execution. The guillotine sometimes wouldn't cut all the way through. The noose wouldn't break their neck (or the rope would break). The cyanide wouldn't release properly. The electric chair wouldn't make proper contact through the skin, burning them alive instead of instantly electrocuting them. And sometimes the anaesthetic doses for lethal injection go wrong, so the person wakes up as the kill-you-horribly part is injected; or they use the wrong drugs. This the advantage of nitrogen, anything less than a kill is benign.

or we could just make life without parole the top possible penalty and save a ton of money AND make errors more reversible

At some point someone has to clean up the most violent murderers of society. Someone has to be willing to do what others won't in order to protect everyone - including those who would not make the effort to protect society from people like McGuire.

Nobody likes these things. We are not a pack blood thirsty mongrels waiting for another chance to harm someone under the guise of law and order. But at some point someone needs to make sure people like McGuire don't get a chance to practice their craft ever again.

So your only happy when you/your society is as bad as he was.You cheapen all life.

This raises a point.

Is it vengeance or is that we simply want these people out of our lives permanently.

Some clearly want the convicted to get their comeuppance -- they want closure of a final variety, this convict will pay the ultimate price, at least in this mortal form, being ejected from the game.

Others see no chance of reforming the convict and do not relish them living a relatively easy life while everyone else has to work for their food and shelter. Prison life isn't really so horrible that some people are willing to return to it -- finding the outside world too much of a challenge or this is where their buddies from the street are and now they can go hang with them. Prison isn't so much a punishment as a way to segregate those convicted from society and visa-versa. Were you in a tiny town you and your neighbors may feel a need for accelerated and terminal judgement against villains, even of offences which seem of too little consequence to warrant a death sentence -- such it was in many sparsely populated communities at times in history.

If we can me completely certain that there never will be an error in a capitol crime sentencing, I would advocate immediately dropping the killer in a wood chipper head first. However, being as there is always going to be some error in the legal system the question we should be asking is, "How many innocent people are we willing to murder in the name of revenge/justice?"

Because, until you get to that 100%, and never make an error, that is what you are doing. You are murdering people because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, are the wrong skin color, or cannot afford a good lawyer. At least if you screw up a life in prison sentence, you can let the person out in a decade or two when the truth comes to light.

There is a great bullshit test I came up with to give to someone who advocates capitol punishment. Ask them if our court system is 100% perfect in convicting the guilty. Then ask them if that means that means that we are murdering at least a few of the wrong people with capitol punishment. Then ask them if they would still feel that capitol punishment was fair and just if they were one of those people that was selected to die. Then ask them if they still support capitol punishment. If they say still yes, they are lying.

If we can me completely certain that there never will be an error in a capitol crime sentencing, I would advocate immediately dropping the killer in a wood chipper head first. However, being as there is always going to be some error in the legal system the question we should be asking is, "How many innocent people are we willing to murder in the name of revenge/justice?"

I'm sympathetic to this line of reasoning; however, by logical extension you must also be against any sort of punishment for criminals at all. For while death is a permanent, irrevocable punishment, so is any form of wrongful incarceration. You can't undo the loss of a portion of a life wrongly spent in prison (and no, monetary compensation isn't equivalent).

Ultimately, the answer is yes, some small level of error must be acceptable in the criminal justice system, or we must otherwise let all the accused go

I'm sympathetic to this line of reasoning; however, by logical extension you must also be against any sort of punishment for criminals at all. For while death is a permanent, irrevocable punishment, so is any form of wrongful incarceration. You can't undo the loss of a portion of a life wrongly spent in prison

No, not in any sense whatsoever. You could continue down the slippery slope and claim that police should not be able to question or detain anyone at all, in a

I'm not against all of the additional costs, mind you, in this day and age we ought to be damn sure we're executing the right person.

well spoken. In fact you touched on another reason to do away with the death penalty: Suppose you convict and execute the wrong guy. You have just committed a double error in that an innocent is dead, and the real criminal will likely never be found and caught. Has there ever been a case where the wrong person has been executed, and then the real criminal is caught and successfully prosecuted? IANAL, but I don't think I have ever heard of such a thing....

But... Our system right now is so paranoid against executing the falsely convicted, that stays of execution are granted when there is the faintest whiff of innocence. Prisoners are kept for decades, just to avoid wrongful execution.

From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] : "Newly available DNA evidence has allowed the exoneration and release of more than 15 death row inmates since 1992 in the United States, but DNA evidence is available in only a fraction of capital cases."

That's more than one person per year exonerated by DNA evidence. There are far more people on death row who have been convicted for crimes where there is no DNA evidence. There will be many people on death row now, who are innocent, and can't get that evidence to prove it. There will have been many innocent people already executed.

I'd insist (on cruelty grounds) on choosing the method of my execution, and being monitored by a pain specializing neurologist. (There are several supposedly-humane methods that haven't been sufficiently explored.)

You can insist all you like, doesn't make a difference to the justice system.

I'm in an odd position of believing in the death penalty, but willing to see it go.

I believe that if we took the death penalty seriously as a society, and actually used it, it would stop being an empty threat. As it stands, there are so few executions in most of the states that we are getting very, very little deterrence out of it. Criminals know that it doesn't happen often. If they are convicted, they don't believe they'll be given the death penalty. Their chances are statistically 0.

"Thou shall not kill" is a bad interpretation of the commandment. The original text uses the word for "murder" as in "no killing an innocent person". Executions for punishment are not uncommon in the Bible.

Also to hopefully reform criminals so that they can rejoin society as productive individuals.

Also remember that biblically speaking an eye for an eye is given as a limiting example. That is to say that the punishment may not be any more severe at it's worst than the crime that was commited, and a lesser punishment should be used in most cases.

Nit: "An eye for an eye" was directly repudiated by Jesus, who advocated extremes of forgiveness instead.

The superiority of restorative justice over retributive justice was a novel concept around year 30, and some Biblical authors were having trouble getting their heads around it, so you can see other quotations that seem to still have the Eye for an Eye flavor to them. But Jesus' refutation of that attitude, in Matthew, does not leave much room for interpretation. And, as if we needed clarity, his deeds (you know, like spending his last breath asking for forgiveness for all the people who had just nailed him to a cross and left him to die) back the attitude up very unambiguously.

It makes the whole doctrine of Hell seem like something of an anachronism, however. Or rather, hell as "eternal conscious torment," which not only has the retributive justice angle, but also qualifies as a punishment that is egregiously worse than the crime. Other interpretations, based on Jesus' use of the word "Gehenna" and its varied meanings at the time, attempt to re-interpret Hell as something more restorative in nature. But such ideas are not in the mainstream (and require a lot more education in Biblical history and Higher Criticism than most care to obtain).

It is a well-known and thoroughly debunked myth. If you look at the actual science and physiology involved, the loss of blood pressure from decapitation will induce practically instant unconsciousness in the head.

Killing an unarmed and fully secured captive has no place in a mature and civilized society. I call bullshit on any claim that the death penalty is a deterrent and somehow weighed in the minds of a person who decides to rape and kill a pregnant woman. The real aim of the death penalty is to satiate the rabid mob of townsfolk who would prefer take matters into their own hands with a rope and a tree. Heck, I'll even admit that I'd be among those first in line to get a piece of this guy if he had done this to someone I knew but that doesn't mean I don't hope that calmer minds would prevail. Even in this case it doesn't really bother me that this man suffered, but that he suffered in the name of name of supposed 'justice'.

You've got it wrong. The death penalty isn't about the "rabid mob of townsfolk" getting revenge. It's about getting rid of a worthless human being so we can get on with our lives. There's no need to get emotional about it.

I'm not. the rest of us, the people who are supporting an otherwise cruel and unsual punishment are part of society. Civilized persons don't condone torture.

>Doesn't the coverage of his slow, painful death serve as even the slightest deterrent?

no.

>Doesn't that help to keep bad people from harming society?

no.

>But at some point the actions of someone are so vile and so beyond the realm of acceptable that we must take action to guarantee that they are never given the opportunity to take those actions again against anyone.

torture doesn't do that. Your 19th century theory on policing/criminal justice belongs with the "eye for an eye" criminal justice in the dustbin of history. Its both barbaric and ineffective,

Not convinced that has ever worked. I am doubtful anybody has ever sat down and thought "man, I'd blow up this school if I thought I'd go to federal pound me in the ass prison for life, or if I was humanely executed, but if there's a chance I might get tortured for ten minutes and then executed it's just not worth it".

later adjusted to 25 after the observers called bullshit...
*personally* I'm against the death penalty, but if you're going to do it, just make yourself a Guillotine. "Lethal injection" is quite distasteful as it dresses up a killing as some pseudo-medical procedure. Scewing this up quite so magnificently is just jaw-dropping - although I suspect you don't send your brightest off to work in the penal system.
What really shocks me though is the response of a significant number of people here, that the suffering he endured was justified as it was 'deserved'. I've tried in vain to think of how to get my point across, but can't think of any common ground to even start my pitch that the deliberate infliction of suffering upon another is simply wrong.
I'm a great big atheist - but generally feel I've got a lot in common with those of faith, at least in my views if not the underlying reason. My biblical knowledge is rusty to say the least, but I'm reasonably sure when Jesus killed sinners, he at least did it mercifully.

On the other hand, their refusal to provide drugs for executions has *stopped* many executions that would have otherwise happened. Those are direct effects. The suffering of this man was an indirect effect; only Ohio is to blame for his torture and death.

It took quite a lot of political pressure to get this through the EU. But it's quite worth it. Refusing to support other countries in this particular traditions is one of the better things that has happened in politics over here the last few years.

Also, correction for the summary: The EU didn't ban selling certain drugs to prisons, they banned exporting drugs to a country that would use them for killing, i.e., the prison could have used the drugs from Lundbeck, but the EU would then ban export of the drugs to the US, even to hospitals. So, if you'd like to put a negative spin on what we did you could say that we held you hostage and threatened to deny you medicine.

So ignoring for a minute all the ethical questions etc, just thinking about the process. I do not have medical training, but I have always wondered why they can't just use the drugs used for general anesthetic in general surgeries? Put someone under with those, then you can stop their heart painlessly when they're unconscious. Certainly there is a large supply of those drugs around.

Exactly this. I'm only a second year med student and even I could tell you that trying to kill someone with the mixture of drugs in the summary would be a really ugly process. I'm pretty sure we can't use propofol for the same reason we can't use the pentobarbital mentioned in the summary, but honestly a regular dose of propofol to knock someone unconscious plus a pneumatic piston like we use to humanely kill food animals would be the obvious option. Sure it makes a bigger mess, but it's WAY more humane for the person being executed, the one who were trying to protect from unnecessary cruelty and suffering. Propofol plus guillotine works well too. As it turns out medical science knows a lot more about reliably making people unconscious with drugs than about reliably killing them with drugs. Given that, if the killing is to happen, it should be done with something we know works reliably and quickly.

You're not far off the mark. For short OR procedures, fentanyl is preferred because the onset is faster and the duration is shorter, but hydromorphone can be used. Midazolam is used in conjunction for it's sedative and amnetic properties. This is also still a common combination when patients are mechanically vented. Patients lose complete orientation to what's happening to them before they lose consciousness. The observers' perception that he "suffered" is very unlikely to be the case.

The new drugs were used because European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions — among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital (pentobarbital being the "general anesthetic in general surgeries").

An old post on that exact topic was even referenced in TFA, but to provide it again

If we want the death penalty to be a deterrent against crime, potential criminals should have to face a death that's scary, and not expect a painless injection that lets them quietly pass away.

Though I question the value of any death penalty as a deterrent since it's so rarely applied and the criminal either thinks he's going to get away with it or isn't worried about the consequences no matter what the consequences are -- 5 years in prison and then death might be even more attractive to some than a lifetime in prison.

My principle reason for wanting a painless and relatively low stress execution method is that we have an imperfect justice system. Which means we periodically commit murder in the name of executing criminals. Other than some sense of vindication we as a society gain very little from a condemned persons suffering. So in the event of an innocent person being put to death I would at the least hope that there last few minutes of life are not spent in agonizing pain.

So far as deterance goes I don't think that it really works very well because that only works when people make logical decisions about what they are doing. When murder is involved there is rarely much sound reasoning happening. Additionally I think it makes more sense for such a criminal to meet a quiet ignominous end.

Would someone still steal a car or shoplift if they knew they'd be executed if caught? Probably not as often...

They tried this approach in UK back in the day, with sentences of hanging handed out routinely to pickpockets (often underage) provided that the amount stolen was more than a certain rather small sum. It didn't really help deter crime. On the other hand, it does mean that someone stealing a car would be likely to murder any witnesses, since it's death for him either way if he gets caught, and so anything reducing the chance of getting caught is fair game at this point.

It's worth remembering that despite all the moral panics, we do actually live in a time where crime rates - especially violent crime rates - are at their historic lows in the Western civilization. That despite the fact that a good part of it has completely abolished death penalty, and some countries having even abolished life sentence.

The general anesthesia that gives the most reliable results, sodium thiopental, happens to be the drug the Dutch won't export. Most general anesthetics aren't capable of guaranteeing, to the extent a court requires, that the subject is unconscious, or of working fast enough, or being administered at the levels required to induce certain unconsciousness without causing toxic side effects- vomiting, convulsions, hallucinations, agonizing pain.

I don't think Europeans would care much about American-made weapons. If you stop and consider for a moment that the US service rifle and light machine gun are both manufactured by a Belgian company, the military standard-issue sidearm is Italian, the most popular police/LEO handgun is Austrian, and the most popular SMG is German...

We have complete understanding of how to knock someone so far out that you can cut into them for hours in an operating room, even to the point of removing their heart for a transplant. Why the heck to people have to go from fully conscious to dead in a single shot? Knock them out completely painlessly, and then kill them while they can feel nothing. I've never understood lethal injections at all!

Or do what the Chinese do - put him under general anesthesia and harvest his organs - heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, whatever can be transplanted. Then let the anesthesia effects wear out - he won't feel it. Societal benefit in more ways than one.

Seriously, did NO ONE ACTUALLY READ THE ARTICLE? You are like the 10th person saying the same thing that was not only answered by TFA, it was the whole point of this exercise.

They used to do exactly what you guys were saying, and use the same drugs that are used in general anesthesia. But for whatever reason US companies willing to sell them to prisons don't make them and the European countries that do have banned the sale. So they tried something they could get, and there you go...

I thought testing drugs on humans -- without their informed consent and successful prior testing -- was banned long ago.

It doesn't matter that the person is a prisoner; in fact the standards are higher for them, because they are much less able to refuse consent. It also doesn't matter that they will die soon; terminally ill patients also must give informed consent.

Since innocent people end up on death-row and are frequently exonnerated by DNA or new evidence, then how can it be logical to maintain a death penalty? If you're going to say "well, maybe.1% of the time an innocent person is put to death but it's for the greater good", then how about you line up to be the next.1%?

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

It's just a rewording of Blackstone's ratio, but it makes the point really clear.

I know I will be bombarded by right wing-nuts and tough love justice advocates (cold fjord are you here?), but does anyone not see the ridiculous hypocrisy of the death penalty?

You are not allowed to kill, but it okay for us to kill you.

I won't get into the fiscal debate as to whether it is cheaper to lock away someone for life or to execute with multiple appeals and proceedings. It shouldn't matter. If it is wrong to take a life, then it is wrong to take it in any circumstance. End of story. Then when you factor in the fact that we are constantly finding innocent people convicted (if not for death penalty offenses). Often due to poor representation, over zealous prosecutors, or shoddy politically or financially motivated police and forensic work, it would seem to me that the ethical cost of killing one innocent person would outweigh all of it. Even if our judicial system was perfect, humans make errors.

However, as with so much else in our society, our desire for vicarious retribution, our poor ability to truly judge relative risk, and the fear peddled by those in power to keep you caged keep winning.

I, for one, do not believe the state has a right to take any life, regardless. Besides, if our society wasn't hell-bent on spending billions of dollars to incarcerate non-violent offenders, there would be plenty of cash in the coffers to put every sociopath away for several lifetimes, with money left over.

Here in Denmark, Lundbeck has been under fire for their drug being used to kill people. They've tried to defend themselves in various ways, e.g. by casting it as misuse as their drug. But in the end in Denmark the American executions are viewed upon in the same light as the stories you hear of amputations and stoning people to death in the middle east. So the reaction has been as if a company sold convenient stones to be used for said stonings.

Thousands of people are put under every day for surgery. Why not use the same tried and proven method of doing that to put the condemned out like a light? Then when he's totally out of it, cut his head off. We still know how to make guillotines, don't we? And when the French were using those to kill people, the ones being killed were wide awake.

An added benefit is that it might just get the attention of some politicians.

And her opinion on the 8th amendment matters why exactly? (yes, yes, I know that invoking the victim, and her precious fetus too, I see, is fashionable; but it's kind of a lousy substitute for thinking).

Considering that she was presumably still pregnant by choice, it evidently had some value to her, and isn't it the mother's opinion that the pro-choice people are always screaming about in the first place?

Seems to me that both the liberals and conservative pick and choose which humans have rights and which ones don't. The guy I am replying to is a flaming liberal (see his other posts in other stories) so therefore defends a womans right to terminate her unborn human child.

He will have a ready excuse for why a human in fetus form doesnt deserve rights: he will claim that the human in fetus form is less than human, but the "less than human" argument is the same that the conse

Remember, we already spent more money dealing with the mandatory appeals required for death penalty cases than it would cost to imprison him for life (which doesn't have the same mandatory appeals process). Had we just sent him to prison for life without parole, it would have been cheaper. The death penalty is not a cost saving measure.

It ain't just about the victim's family, asshole - it's so that he can never do the same crime again, and we don't have to bear the cost of his remaining days.

Bullshit. LWOP is cheaper than capital punishment. Fact.

It's got nothing to do with public safety and fuck all to with economics. It's about retribution, satisfying the bloodlust of an angry mob. Capital punishment is lynch-mob justice. It's expensive, ineffective, and barbaric. Period.

My concern in this particular line of thought isn't about the right or wrong of the situation. Once we decide to execute people, and we know it's expensive, and we do them infrequently and all over the damned place, then we should employ some sort of economy of scale in doing so.

Okay then. How about industrial-scale gas chambers with a railway line going in the front and a crematorium out the back? To ease the minds of the convicts you could just lie to them and tell them it's a work camp, and put a sign on the gate saying "work sets you free." Better build that chimney pretty high though. The locals are sure to complain about the smell of burning human flesh.

But more unpleasant than I'd expect a civilized society to behave. There's a reason people have generally looked up to the US. This sort of thing is not exactly America's proudest achievement, and history will not look kindly upon the quantity and manner of execution.

Screw morphine. I've wondered why we don't just use nitrogen to suffocate them. There is no suffocation reflex, because the body's suffocation reflex is based on overabundance of CO2, not underabundance of O2. It's completely painless - they pass out within a minute and never wake up. In the oil and shipping industries we have "Nitrogen: The Silent Killer" posters plastered everywhere in enclosed at-risk spaces. I never understood why we deal with expensive drug cocktails when we have tanks of simple N2 ready to be used.

People can have really bad reactions to opiates: they can aspirate into their lungs; they can be allergic; if the subject has an opiate tolerance, they could remain conscious while they die of respiratory paralysis.

The idea with the three drug protocol is that the administrator can be reasonably certain the subject is unconscious and insensate when they give the drugs that stop breathing, and the drugs are selected for their uniform effect. Opiates do all kinds of stuff and the death can be either peacefu

We need and have the drugs we use in surgery. But if we use them for executions, the european companies that make these drugs we depend on for surgery will take them away. That's the whole point of this.

We're not out of pentobarbital. We have an unlimited supply (at market price) for surgery.